Most energy efficient desktop cpu of last 10-12 years?

[DevaVictrix]

Has anyone got suggestions? I’d imagine any cpu from the past 10-12 years (maybe longer) will perform well enough for me but which have the lowest power consumption? I’ll probably need 2 cores, 4 threads minimum.

My silent little NUC type server isn’t quite up to hosting a GitLab server so I’m half thinking about replacing it with an old desktop.

I don’t want spend much on it (ideally, <£50 on cpu/mb) and I want to keep power consumption to an absolute minimum. My current server consumes between 5 and 7w. The only spare I’ve got kicking about sucks 250w just ticking over and sounds like a hovercraft!

Thanks

[Jamebonds1]

Energy efficient is a government sticker, but Intel 3rd gen was good desktop cpu.

[emoticorpse]

Problem might be your fans and their settings.

[skOsH♥]

AMD

Their cpu's don't get very hot, they can process regular computer use with ease. Mine can overclock and still only uses about 40-60 watts on normal load.

Their gpu's run hot, I would lower voltage %, until its at -5 or -6

But if you're comparing AMD to nVIDIA, or Intel, Intels tend to run hot. Water cooling is highly recommended

[r.linder]

A used Ryzen 3 or Ryzen 5 system would probably be your best bet, even brand new the R3 4100 and R5 4500 don't cost too much and accompanying motherboards and RAM are pretty cheap at the moment as well.

On the Intel side, the i3-10100 and i5-10400 were also very efficient but it's a little trickier to find a cheap LGA1200 motherboard

[A&A]

What are your NUC's specs?

[_I_]

a newer pi might do the trick too

[alexmaru]

Smaller tech process, more energy efficient.

Right now first goes Apple processors, they are on 3nm TSMC (because they are paying for researches and have the priority)

Next goes AMD on the 5nm.

And last is the Intel on their 10nm.

Choose the brand and than find the processor in TPD what you need.

[_I_]

those nm scales are measuring different things
they just pick the smallest thing, years ago it was the actual transistor size, now its tolerance or something else

[DevaVictrix]

Thanks guys - I'm looking at the Ryzen 3 2200s - G and GE. Old enough to be cheap, new enough to have what I want, and they apparently idle at 3-5w. The OEM GE version has a TDP of 35w so it could probably run fanless too (well, configured 'off' - until... ). It's probably overkill being so much faster than my Celeron N3450 but if I look long enough the price might be right. I can see myself forgetting about a budget and building some tiny ITX thing!

A Pi would certainly do the job but by the time you've bought a case that can house an SSD they end up costing so much now (completely goes against there market entry USP, really... wrong people bought it!).

Thanks